Gena Rowlands is devoted to denying the realities of Cassavetes' life and work and to creating an unreal, untrue myth. Not surprisingly, given the star-struck Hollywood culture in which we live, it has been all too easy for her to find sycophantic collaborators willing to do her bidding and tell the story the way she dictates. Prof. Carney has stood out from the crowd in his attempt to fight for the truth. In response, Gena Rowlands has waged a campaign devoted to savaging Prof. Carney's reputation.

To see the practical results of Rowlands's controlling - and sanitizing - the story of her husband's life and work in a documentary film, Charles Kiselyak's A Constant Forge, click here. And to see the results of her control of information in two published biographical portraits, click on page 5 (2006 - 2007) of the Chronology section.

Click here for a glimpse of what Cassavetes was really like as a person and an illustration of the kinds of facts that Rowlands is retaliating against Carney for revealing. Her treatment of his Shadows and Faces finds, and her insistence that Criterion remove his name from the Cassavetes box set that he spent more than eight months helping to create are part of her attempt to silence him.

For a counterexample of how research should be done, see Ray Carney's description of how he researched and wrote his Cassavetes on Cassavetes and Shadows books, click here.

To read a chronological listing of events between 1979 and the present connected with Ray Carney's search for, discovery of, and presentation of new material by and information about John Cassavetes, including a chronological listing of the attempts of Gena Rowlands's and Al Ruban's to deny or suppress Prof. Carney's discoveries, click here.

To read another statement about why Gena Rowlands is not the ultimate authority on the meaning of his work or on how it should be cared for or preserved, click here.

To read about Carney's being blackballed by Rowlands from contributing to another DVD project, and about Seymour Cassel's being put in his place, and, at Rowlands's behest, making (foolish and incorrect) comments that "there is no first version of Shadows" in the voice-over commentary to the Shadows disk, click here.

To read a 2008 interview with a New Zealand magazine where Ray Carney talks about Rowlands's attempts to suppress or withhold Cassavetes' manuscripts and film prints from circulation, click here.

An excerpt from:

The Challenges of Truth–Telling

In a Culture of Celebrity

(Or: Why most biographies of Cassavetes are not just bad but plain wrong)

John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands used to tell friends about to be interviewed: “Just remember, you don’t owe reporters the truth.” Since they lied about so many dates and events when they spoke with reporters, and inserted so many fictitious accomplishments in their press releases, particularly in their early years, the reference books, even prestigious ones like the Encyclopedia Britannica, are laced with errors:

• Cassavetes’ father had a Harvard degree. False. He was a drop–out.

• His father was a millionaire importer–exporter. False. For most of Cassavetes’ childhood, the family was extremely poor and his father could barely put food on the table.

• Cassavetes attended Colgate, majored in English, and was attracted to acting by the writing of Robert E. Sherwood. False on all counts. He was a terrible student who couldn’t have gotten into Colgate if he had tried. He was failed out of a veteran’s college (a school that admitted almost everyone who applied) after only a few months, after cutting most of his classes, doing no academic work, and spending his time drinking, gambling, partying, skirt–chasing, playing basketball, and goofing off.

• Gena Rowlands was born in 1934 or 1936 (or 1939 or 1940). False. She was born in 1930 and lied about her age to everyone throughout her life.

• Rowlands graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. False. She dropped out after extremely poor performance in her first year.

• Cassavetes was scornful of the Actors Studio. False. He auditioned for admission at least three times and was bitter when he was not accepted.

• Cassavetes never cared what viewers thought about his work or what the critics said. False. He re–edited a number of his films to try to make them clearer and simpler and more appealing.

• Cassavetes and Rowlands had an idyllic, “Hollywood–romance” marriage. Most false of all.

On and on the errors go, repeated until they have assumed the force of fact. In many areas of Cassavetes’ life and art, the myths have completely blocked the view of the realities. My Cassavetes on Cassavetes and Shadows books were the first published attempts to separate the facts from the fictions in Cassavetes’ life and work, and my current work continues this project. Since the press releases almost all previous accounts have relied on are notoriously unreliable, in every possible instance, I have taken dates and events from unimpeachable, original sources. I have secured copies of birth and marriage certificates and school files. I have consulted published newspaper and magazine accounts contemporaneous with actual events. I have pored through daily television listings and movie theater booking records to verify the actual broadcast or release dates of films and television projects. I have recorded the creation and revision dates present on the actual physical pages of Cassavetes’ screenplays and screenplay drafts -- many of which were presented to me as gifts from the filmmaker but are otherwise unavailable (see the section below about Rowlands's attempts to suppress them for more about why this is so).

I have also talked to individuals directly involved in particular events – but the use of living witnesses cuts both ways. In some respects, it is clearly helpful to be able to talk to individuals who lived through particular events, but there are many pitfalls and traps connected with relying on first–person accounts. Interviews with Cassavetes’ casts and crew members are full of errors – both of omission and commission. Individuals have claimed credit for doing things they did not do, have given accounts of events at which they were not personally present (without making that clear), or have distorted the truth in other ways. The mistakes have often been innocent or well–meaning. Memories of events that took place forty or fifty years ago are notoriously unreliable, understandings were often imperfect even at the time an event took place, and points of view are biased by the role of the observer in the particular situation. Courtroom lawyers are familiar with these sorts of bias. In many instances, an individual has unconsciously shaped his or her account of the making of a film or an interaction with Cassavetes to support a “thesis” – to make it congruent with his or her interpretation of the meaning of the films or his or her understanding of Cassavetes’ life. Beyond those things, the general “idealization” of the lives of celebrities as objects of our fantasy–life, the effort to “cooperate” with an interviewer (following an interviewer’s lead in response to a leading question), and the desire to “speak no evil” about the dead (individuals’ desires “not to upset Gena”) has led people, consciously or unconsciously, to shade or trim their accounts in other ways – to make their retrospective accounts of events more exciting and dramatic than they actually were at the time, to omit facts which they judge to be incongruous or irrelevant to their “thesis,” or to suppress parts of the story out of a desire to be tactful or kind.

That much is probably true of all biographical research that involves someone whose wife and children are still alive, but the situation is complicated in Cassavetes’ case by the fact that a small number of the individuals who have provided information to biographers have engaged in acts of deliberate falsification. Some of the people who worked with Cassavetes do not get along with others or agree with (or understand) particular critical interpretations of his work and have used interviews or public appearances as opportunities to “settle scores” or promote their own personal interpretation of the filmmaker’s work. To elevate their own importance, enhance their status, and garner invitations to speak at film festivals, several individuals have lied about their involvement with the creation of particular works (e.g. two individuals have claimed first–hand knowledge about the making of the first version of Shadows who had little or no actual involvement with the film). One individual who has a financial interest in the licensing and distribution of Cassavetes’ work has used statements to biographers, post–screening question–and–answer sessions, and audio commentaries on DVDs to promote his business interests by falsifying facts about the history of Cassavetes’ work.

Interviewers have often turned to Gena Rowlands to arbitrate differences of opinion, in ignorance of two basic realities – first, that she had an extremely limited involvement with the creation of the films, and, second, that she has a limited understanding of the meaning and importance of the films. Like many other actresses, however talented, Rowlands simply does not have an analytic or critical intellect. Beyond the technical details of her own performances in some of the films, she does not really have a deep understanding of her husband’s work. Viewers and reviewers have romanticized her artistic relationship with Cassavetes, treating Rowlands as if she had been his artistic and creative collaborator (a term Cassavetes himself significantly never applied to her), when in fact she was closer simply to being another actor who showed up for the scenes in which she was appearing and who left once they were shot. And that was her involvement in the films in which she played a lead. She had even less involvement than that in Shadows, Too Late Blues, A Child Is Waiting, Husbands, and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

The deeper problem with relying on Rowlands as an authority on Cassavetes’ life and work is that she has not proved herself to be a neutral or objective source of information, even when confined to matters into which she might be presumed to have a degree of insight. Since her husband’s death, for reasons of her own, she has attempted to deny virtually all of the unpleasant realities connected with his life, his marriage to her, the creation of his work, and the critical responses to it. The result has been a fairy–tale version of Cassavetes’ emotional life and a Mickey–Rooney let’s–put–on–a–show account of the creation of the films. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, Rowlands has vehemently denied that her husband ever experienced a negative emotion, or that he was, even temporarily, disappointed or depressed by the commercial failure of his work and the negative critical responses it elicited. Ironically enough, she has turned her husband’s life, her relationship with him, and the events connected with the making of the films into precisely the kind of sanitized, movie–star hero–worship that Cassavetes devoted himself to repudiating in his work.

One of the ways Rowlands has attempted to perpetuate a Disney-ized, press–release version of her husband’s life and career is by controlling the information available to researchers. Journalists have been given “ground rules” on areas of Cassavetes’ life and relationship with her that they are not to ask questions about, which include virtually everything relating to his notoriously bad behavior on and off the set (which ranged from screaming and crying fits at home, and unbelievable bouts of binge drinking, gambling, and womanizing in his time away from home, to every imaginable form of vindictive, humiliating, bullying, and sadistic behavior in his treatment of actors, crew members, producers, and studio executives and publicists associated with the creation of the films). When Rowlands has been contacted by individuals, including the present author, who have pointed out important omissions or obvious mistakes in the texts of interviews she has given, she has either refused to respond to the inquiry or has continued to repeat the demonstrable fictions.

In terms of serious scholarship, researchers have been denied access to any of the thousands of pages of unproduced scripts and unpublished manuscripts in her possession in an apparent effort to keep them from seeing how scatological and sexual some of the material is. (To the best of my knowledge, as we approach twenty years after Cassavetes’ death, not a single page of Cassavetes’ writing has been deposited by his widow in a university library or film archive.) Avowed biographers have been denied access to Cassavetes’ letters, clipping files, and other papers. In fact, Rowlands has not only refused to assist, but has actively discouraged every potential biographer who has contacted her from writing anything at all about her husband.

To make the task of the would–be biographer or scholar even more daunting, Rowlands has taken action to retaliate against anyone who has questioned the “approved” story–line or attempted to correct the record. (When I refer to “Rowlands” here and in what follows, I include individuals employed by her who are acting with her knowledge or at her behest. As the business manager of the Cassavetes estate, a man named Al Ruban has made many of these calls and written many of these letters in Rowlands's name.) If a scholar or critic has expressed skepticism about her account or has written something that touches on an area of Cassavetes’ life that she regards as being off–limits (like the non–fairy–tale aspects of her marriage), Rowlands has engaged in a variety of threatening or punitive responses. She has put roadblocks in the way of the individual’s subsequent research by contacting archives and other holders of Cassavetes–related material and asking them to deny the scholar access to it. (Even where she has no official control over the records, films, or video copies in question, such is the respect with which “movie stars” are accorded by our culture and such is the desire of film archives and museums in particular to curry favor with celebrities, that, when asked, virtually all institutions instantly accede to her request and deny the scholar access to the material, even when it is “officially” supposed to be available for reading or viewing.) She has sent book publishers, archives, film festivals, or video–releasing companies letters threatening legal action if particular material that the particular scholar is associated with is published or screened. She has had a scholar’s invitation to speak at a film festival event or agreement to provide a program note or voice–over commentary for a DVD release revoked by telling the festival administrator or video releaser that permission to use a Cassavetes film or films will be denied if the particular individual she objects to is involved in the event or production. In an especially egregious instance, Rowlands personally told an American DVD releasing company to fire a particular scholarly advisor assisting in the video release of Cassavetes’ films because the scholar had “violated her wishes.” The scholar (the present author) was fired.

The message has not taken long to get out, and the effect has been predictably chilling. If you want “Gena’s blessing” on your project, you had better toe the party line. Otherwise you risk being removed from present and future projects and events connected with Cassavetes’ work, having permission to use or screen printed or video material denied, or having you, your publisher, or the DVD releaser you are working with threatened with legal action. Since book publishers and video releasers are notoriously shy of becoming embroiled in legal squabbles, a threat is as effective as a lawsuit – and, in this instance, probably more effective, since Rowlands’s attempts to keep certain facts and events out of circulation would almost certainly not hold up in court. In other words, even if the predicted legal outcome would be expected to be favorable to the scholar’s use of the material, Rowlands’ legal “deep pockets” as a millionaire movie–star hold out the prospect of bankrupting any non–millionaire researcher who violates her wishes before the case would ever get to court. In short, the situation is an exceptionally vexed and unfortunate one. A researcher is not only forced to go to extraordinary lengths to find out the truth about Cassavetes’ and Rowlands’ lives, but is compelled to exercise a large degree of personal courage (and financial daring) in promulgating it….

Gena Rowlands is devoted to denying the realities of Cassavetes' life and work and to creating an unreal, untrue myth. Not surprisingly, given the star-struck Hollywood culture in which we live, it has been all too easy for her to find sycophantic collaborators willing to do her bidding and tell the story the way she dictates. Prof. Carney has stood out from the crowd in his attempt to fight for the truth. In response, Gena Rowlands has waged a campaign devoted to savaging Prof. Carney's reputation.

To see the practical results of Rowlands's controlling - and sanitizing - the story of her husband's life and work in a documentary film, Charles Kiselyak's A Constant Forge, click here. And to see the results of her control of information in two published biographical portraits, click on page 5 (2006 - 2007) of the Chronology section.

Click here for a glimpse of what Cassavetes was really like as a person and an illustration of the kinds of facts that Rowlands is retaliating against Carney for revealing. Her treatment of his Shadows and Faces finds, and her insistence that Criterion remove his name from the Cassavetes box set that he spent more than eight months helping to create are part of her attempt to silence him.

For a counterexample of how research should be done, see Ray Carney's description of how he researched and wrote his Cassavetes on Cassavetes and Shadows books, click here.

To read a chronological listing of events between 1979 and the present connected with Ray Carney's search for, discovery of, and presentation of new material by and information about John Cassavetes, including a chronological listing of the attempts of Gena Rowlands's and Al Ruban's to deny or suppress Prof. Carney's discoveries, click here.

To read another statement about why Gena Rowlands is not the ultimate authority on the meaning of his work or on how it should be cared for or preserved, click here.

To read about Carney's being blackballed by Rowlands from contributing to another DVD project, and about Seymour Cassel's being put in his place, and, at Rowlands's behest, making (foolish and incorrect) comments that "there is no first version of Shadows" in the voice-over commentary to the Shadows disk, click here.